How is the former Coca-Cola marketer faring on the agency side so far?Shephali Bhatt | ETBrandEquity | Updated: September 09, 2016, 09:54 IST

Wendy ClarkIt's been an eventful year for DDB North America's newly appointed CEO Wendy Clark. At the beginning of this year, she was in the news for migrating from Coca-Cola's marketing realm to the big bad world of advertising - a brave move that, considering how shrinking margins are not even raising eyebrows at so many agencies anymore.

But Clark highlights: "That 'margins are shrinking everywhere' is a sweeping statement to make. Agencies that are not able to evolve or deliver efficiency to their clients are losing margins. Not everyone in the market."

PFP: I'm lovin' it

Speaking of evolution, DDB North America finds itself right in the middle of a development that industry folk are still debating over wondering if it's evolutionary or devolutionary. The movement of McDonald's US account to Omnicom and a few allies in an 'agency of the future' setup. What's been making headlines is the 'pay-for-performance' (PFP) fee model accompanied by the new contract, which Clark has agreed to.Doesn't come as a surprise to us, by the way. She had made her thoughts on the issue absolutely clear the first time we met her, during Cannes Lions 2016 - when she was just 170 days into the new role. "We are keen to have our pay tied to performance, keen to get into those discussions - some of our contracts are performance based. No one wants to do work that doesn’t drive client's business. We had instances of value-based compensation at Coke as well," she tells us.

Cannes as client vs Cannes as agency CEO

This was Clark's 7th year in the South of France for Cannes Lions, but her first from the agency's side. And boy, was it different from the last six. By Day 3, she had to ask for band-aids for her toes. Clients don't do as much walking was agency reps do, you know. Not that she was complaining. Her energy was infectious, especially for us journos who were doing as much (or maybe more) running around to get from one meeting to the other whilst attending key sessions.

A year of wooing later...

How did Chuck Brymer (her former colleague and global CEO of DDB Worldwide) manage to bring her onboard? That's one question so many of us racked our brains with ever since the news of her appointment was out. She finally ends the suspense: For starters, it took Brymer a year to convince her. A year in which he made her meet every senior individual at DDB North America so she gets to know the ways of the agency.Since the two have worked together in the past, it was easier for Brymer to pull the 'I know you, and I can tell you this is the best career move at this point in your life' card. "He also played the CEO card knowing that I am ambitious. He knows I like to create thought leadership in the industry. And he told me I would be able to do that 'first in the market' more often and on several brands here at DDB."

DDB vs Coca-Cola

The agency’s North America division would be about 2000 people. At Coke, the global marketing team alone was 2700 people. “This (DDB) feels a little bit more intimate, more manageable. I can recognise more faces, have more one-to-one conversations here.” What’s challenging, however, is how she’s accountable for the whole region’s P&L now. “At Coke, I had accountability for marketing, but not the bottom-line. On the client’s side, you felt the pressure of showing a 90-day report card. Over here (at DDB), you have ultimate accountability - you feel very responsible to all associates of the company.”

Reminder: Not a client anymore

Making the shift has been an interesting journey for Clark. It’s always amusing how ‘interesting’ euphemises anything else you might have wanted to say but couldn’t. Clark isn’t one to euphemise, though. She opens up: “I have worked in an agency previously but not at such a senior level. You can say that I have got 25 years of experience but I have never done this before. I am creating the narrative as I go, and drawing in from my experience and knowledge to do that.” The agency environment feels familiar to her but there are times she has to remind herself she’s not the client anymore. “I have to remind myself that they get to lead the meeting. It’s not about you. You can say that I am ambidextrous now or even bilingual.”

The fact is, Clark is able to see both sides of the contract now. “If someone asks where I am, some people say, ’She’s probably in her office negotiating with herself’." That empathy is going to take her a long way now, we reckon.

Procurement - a self-inflicted issue

Having been on both sides of the table, it was easier for Clark to talk about the limitations of both parties - clients as well as agencies. She talks about how procurement’s rising influence is a result of agencies not moving faster. “Clients had to have efficiencies. Since agencies couldn’t provide it to them, they had to look within their organisations and fall back on the procurement guys.” She doesn’t leave it at that but offers a plausible solution: “We have to stop trying to protect what is and move on. The agency model isn’t broken but it definitely needs to evolve. If we don’t evolve it, the client will do it for us.”

Lost a little bit of Humanity

Never in the history of the communication business, has everything been reduced to sheer numbers to this extent. Clark observes: “I think we let humanity in our relationships erode. The speed and pace of the market doesn’t give us time to appreciate relationships. We just have to put that in the forefront of our minds, make sure we nurture relationships. It’s also essential from the hiring standpoint. We ought to attract the most interesting and vibrant of the next generation to our industry.”

Stress - not a useful emotion

All the challenges that the agency life brings along sure does make Clark anxious. She’s concerned, she admits, but not stressed. In fact, just the night before we met her, someone asked her why she was looking so ‘stressed'. ‘Is it the McDonald’s pitch (that was still underway back then)?’ she was asked. “And I told them stress is not an emotion I can relate to. It’s like spinning in a circle, doesn’t help with anything. Anxiety makes you go figure stuff out, helps you move forward.”

She’s a pretty calm person, she tells us. “Calm and restless,” we interject. She agrees, with a smile. Clark works out at the end of every day, almost. Exercise helps equalise your mind, she says. But the treadmill gets to see her around midnight, when kids have been tucked into bed. “I can focus then.”

One can only imagine the kind of deliverables (for McD) that will be making her anxious, while she’s gracing the treadmill in her timezone.

She probably knows that at this point a lot of people in the global industry are wondering whether this ex-marketer is changing the course of the agency fee model for better or worse. We are also eager to know how this is going to play out in the next few quarters.